B is for Blogs

 This blog was born on a porch swing on a Memorial Day weekend almost twenty years ago. We were at a cookout at my sister-in-law's house and I had wandered around to the front of the house, where I took a seat on the porch swing. I think at some point my daughter joined me (or perhaps I joined her), but I'm no longer sure. I know it was a sad cookout. It was the first holiday after my mother-in-law had passed, and it seemed important to get together, even if no one felt like celebrating.

So many holidays -- and so many posts -- have come and gone since then. The little girl on the porch swing beside me (presumably) is now 25, with a real-world job and a place of her own. Scrolling back through close to two decades of posts, I'm reminded of so many milestones. 

Originally, I posted this blog on Typepad. I knew nothing about the technology that made blogs magically soar through cyberspace and appear before the eyes of my readers. Though I still don't know much about that, my tech skills have improved significantly and I can do more here than I could when I first started out, back when my posts were simply typewritten uploads of whatever it was I wanted to say that day.

Over time, this blog has featured updates and teasers of upcoming books, along with "interviews" with my characters and announcements when the books made their debut. Around 2015, I started writing about organization so much that I took those posts to a home of their own, my Organizing by STYLE blog, which gave me the material for Know Thyself and True Confessions Wednesday.

As regular readers know, posts here on the porch swing have been both sporadic and scheduled. Initially, I posted "whenever" but, when I retired from public education, I made scheduled posts a priority. Now, I post here twice a week, in some combination of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, depending on the week and what I have to say. Over at Organizing by STYLE, I post on Thursdays.

An invitation from a fellow writer (who later acquired Know Thyself for OSV) led to blogging gigs on CatholicMom.com. At first, I was one of a number of writers posting to a feature called Tech Talk. Then, one summer, I did a series of back-to-school features on the topic of organization and STYLE Savvy was born, along with a lovely relationship with a fellow Jersey writer with whom I've had the privilege to work on a number of projects.

Sometimes, I wonder if blogging enhances my writing or is an obstacle to working on other projects. The truth is, it's both. After years of blogging, I can pound out a short article draft in under an hour as well as writing more quickly in general. Writing blog posts exercises my writing muscles but, more important, it keeps me in touch with my readers and helps to build a connection that helps me keep my audience in mind, no matter what I'm writing.

It's been fun, this blogging adventure. The porch swing offers an interesting place from which to share my perspective, and I hope you'll continue to join me (and my characters) here. We've gotten pretty comfortable, and I hope you have, too.